Project

Eliciting a Sense of Self when Integrating with Computers

Fluid Interfaces

Groups

While some Human-Computer Integration (HInt) systems have successfully demonstrated that humans and technology can be physically and functionally integrated, we find that these integrations are not necessarily part of the users identity (i.e. self-judgment) or felt as part the user (i.e. experienced with a sense of self) and that they can even create feelings of self-dissociation. Literature on how to elicit these self-experiences is often inconsistent and vague, which complicates the metric for success and hinders the advancement of research. To help designers elicit and systematically evaluate in particular a sense of self, we draw metrics and theory from phenomenology and cognitive science.

Figure 2. We argue that eliciting a sense of self allows for user experiences such as “I did that (with my body)”, going beyond “I made the machine do that (for me)” and “The machine did that (for me)”, which is often the current approach when it comes to physical integration of computer systems.

Figure 2: Beyond the mere experience of feeling as one with a technology, eliciting a sense of self over a technology can also have positive behavioral implications on a user.

The elicitation of a pre-reflective sense of self is important, as physical and cognitive integration systems without a sense of self have been shown in some cases to create unpleasant, disembodied, or dissociative experiences, despite being able to increase functionality and performance. For example, researchers found that systems where participants’ hands are controlled by a computer through electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) are often experienced by users as “scary”, and feeling as if they are being “pushed by someone” or “being hacked” [61, 82]. Similarly, interviews with prosthetic and brain-implant users reveal that some experience their prosthesis or integration as a foreign object rather than a part of themselves — even when they are successful users.

Figure 2: Reflective and pre-reflective awareness modulates conscious experience of our bodies in various ways.

Our research introduces the concepts of reflective and pre-reflective awareness from phenomenology and cognitive science and highlights their influence on self-experience, as we believe the vocabulary helps academics and educators discuss the differences in experiential integration of self with HInt systems.

Figure 3: Reflective and pre-reflective awareness of ourselves modulates self-experience in various ways.

Our research further provides researchers with an understanding of the two types of self-experience (1) reflective self-judgments and (2) pre-reflective sense of self caused by reflective and pre-reflective awareness, and show the benefits and limitations of each type of self-experience in design and evaluations of HInt systems.

For further details, read our publication.